The Amazing Story Of A Moonwalker From The Texas Panhandle

History is one of the most incredible things. Why? Because there's always something new, yet old, that you can learn about.

See, I've always had a thing for space. Not obsessed with it or anything, but I always thought the shuttle taking off and all that was cool. It was always interesting to see the pictures that would get sent back.

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Some of the most famous missions came from the Apollo missions. Apollo 11 was the first one to land on the moon. Apollo 13 had an entire movie made about it because of the challenges they had on that mission. Remember, they were SUPPOSED to land on the moon.

So what about the mission in between? Apollo 12 was a pretty cool mission with Texas Panhandle ties to it.

One of the astronauts on the mission was Wheeler, TX—native Alan Bean. Prior to becoming an accomplished artist painter, Bean was part of NASA and played an integral role in the landing of Apollo 12 on the moon.

Since NASA had already had a successful mission of landing on the moon, this one was to further the exploration of it as well as deploy a package that was to be left on the moon "to gather seismic, scientific and engineering data throughout a long period of time," according to NASA's website.

So what was Bean's exact role? He was the Lunar Module pilot and was responsible for separating the module from the main craft and landing and navigating the module no the moon. Bean also spent nearly three hours outside the module on the moon's surface.

One of Bean's responsibilities outside the module was to mount the TV camera to a tripod for the country to watch. During the process, the camera got pointed into the sun and unfortunately, the camera failed to work properly.

Apollo 12 landed without issue and plenty of data was collected and brought back to Earth to study, not to mention all the data the ALSEP package that was left behind grabbed.